Hermann and Gerhard Stoltenberg's Relationship

Hermann and Dr. Gerhard Stoltenberg’s relationship begins in public ceremony and is forged in an absurd emergency: at the opening of Hermann’s new psychiatric clinic, Rudi’s familiar toy-gun routine sends Stoltenberg and his security men into the mud. The encounter briefly brings the Schleswig-Holstein minister-president into the world of the institution Hermann directs, and lets the narrator see the father’s reverence for political authority meet the practical demands of his own work. Their closeness lasts only for that day, but its remembered shape extends from the clinic opening to Stoltenberg’s appearance at Hermann’s funeral.

A meeting at the clinic

The relationship takes place against the institution that is both Hermann’s workplace and the narrator’s childhood home. The director’s villa stood deliberately at the center of the psychiatric complex, among buildings where patients lived in crowded rooms and worked in workshops that combined occupational therapy with exploitation. The narrator and his brothers had absorbed the habit of naming patients with cruel insults, sometimes echoed by their parents. The recollection of that casual stigma sits uneasily beside the later scene: Rudi, whom the family already knows as a harmless patient who likes to ambush people with a convincing-looking revolver, is not an abstraction but a familiar presence whose behavior Hermann understands.

At the clinic’s opening, the family has been entertaining Stoltenberg. As the minister-president leaves, he thanks Hermann for the impressive new building and offers to help if problems arise. His departure is interrupted by a shout ordering everyone to raise their hands. The two men carrying his cases immediately tackle him, bringing him down in the mud and drawing their black pistols. The narrator freezes—not because the voice is unfamiliar, but because he knows it. The voice belongs to Rudi, whose mock threats had been a routine across the psychiatric grounds; what surprises the child is the power that the same performance has when it reaches armed security men and a visiting head of government.

Hermann responds at once, calling for calm and explaining that Rudi is a patient who is harmless and does this often. Rudi emerges behind a newly planted concrete flowerpot, delighted by the effect of his shout, and raises his silver Colt toward the men in the mud. Hermann tells him the game is over and orders him to drop the pistol. The moment ends in a collective pause; two attendants restrain Rudi, while Stoltenberg remains face down until Hermann and the narrator’s mother reassure him that he can get up. The scene turns the formal opening into a collision between staged authority and institutional familiarity: the security men see a threat, whereas Hermann recognizes a recurring behavior and tries to keep the response from escalating.

Authority, embarrassment, and hospitality

The narrator’s first impression of Stoltenberg is shaped by his physical presence and official stature. After the incident, Stoltenberg rises from the mud without accepting Hermann’s offered hand. Soon afterward, at Hermann’s home, he comes out of the bathroom wearing Hermann’s white doctor’s coat. To the child watching him, he looks so naturally authoritative that he seems capable of becoming the unchallenged director of any hospital in a day. Hermann, by contrast, visibly struggles to conceal his awe. The episode thus makes the father’s respect for the minister-president plain before either man speaks about politics.

The family’s welcome also changes the scale of the encounter. The security men, now identified as Michael and Michael, come downstairs in T-shirts and tracksuit trousers and ask to play table tennis. Hermann’s sons go with them, while the narrator stays to watch Stoltenberg. The narrator’s mother treats the minister-president with unceremonious warmth, arranging for the institutional laundry to clean his clothes and offering refreshments. Her ease contrasts with Hermann’s formality and the child’s fascination: in the house, a public official in a borrowed coat is also a guest whose clothes need washing.

The mud has consequences beyond the immediate embarrassment. In the living room, Stoltenberg asks whether a reporter photographed him on the ground. Hermann confirms that the journalist was present and says he asked him to stop taking pictures. Stoltenberg worries that an image could appear in a widely read newspaper, explaining that he is at a decisive point in his political ambitions at both state and federal level. He points out that such a photograph could be worth a great deal. The scene reveals that the minister-president’s composure is not indifference: he is concerned about how the incident might circulate publicly and affect his political prospects. He also asks the narrator to clean his shoes, briefly sending the child out of the private conversation between the two men.

Gratitude and a short-lived intimacy

The encounter gradually becomes less formal. Hermann offers Stoltenberg one of his ties after the minister-president’s own has been damaged. Rather than merely borrowing it, Stoltenberg accepts a blue checked tie as a keepsake of the clinic’s opening. Hermann, who had initially sat tensely on the edge of his chair, seems to have found a more relaxed manner. The gift gives their exchange a personal object to carry beyond the immediate rescue and cleanup.

At the car, Stoltenberg asks Hermann whether he may address him informally. He says that Hermann has helped him in many ways. Hermann hesitates, then accepts; they give each other their first names, Gerhard and Hermann. Stoltenberg leaves holding up the colorful tie and silently mouths his thanks as he takes a call in the limousine. The narrator runs to the window, but the car is already gone. The farewell is warm, yet its brevity is built into the scene: the men have shared one extraordinary afternoon, not begun a sustained friendship.

The final meeting and the loss of office

Hermann and Stoltenberg never see each other again after their reconciliation at the clinic opening. The narrator underscores the limit of their intimacy by remembering that each man used the informal address only once. Their relationship is therefore defined less by ongoing contact than by a single reversal: Hermann’s initial deference gives way to the practical confidence of a host who has helped Stoltenberg through an embarrassing crisis, while the minister-president responds with gratitude and an invitation to familiarity.

Stoltenberg comes to Hermann’s funeral after he has long left office. The narrator sees him bent before his mother, making himself small as he offers condolences in a thin voice. He departs in a green compact car, not a limousine, and overshoots while leaving the cemetery, blocking the cycle path until he reverses for a teenage girl ringing her bell at him. The contrast revises the child’s earlier image of a man whose authority seemed to arise from his very bones. Without office, Stoltenberg’s public radiance has vanished; the immense figure from the clinic is now simply a bereaved visitor in an ordinary car. The funeral appearance does not erase the distance between the two men, but it gives their one-day bond a final, quiet echo.